
Glass 
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PRESENTED BY 



HENRY CODMAN POTTER 



HENRY CODMAN POTTER 



Memorial 3DDre00e$ 



DELIVERED BEFORE 
THE CENTURY ASSOCIATION 

December 12, 1908 



NEW YORK 

PRINTED FOR THE CENTURY ASSOCIATION 

I908 







Publisher 

V09 



HENRY CODMAN POTTER 

BISHOP OF NEW YORK 
BORN 1834 DIED 1908 

Elected Member 

The Century Association 
1869 

Vice-President 

The Century Association 

1883-1895 

President 

The Century Association 
1895-1906 

Elected Honorary Member 

The Century Association 
1906 



CONTENTS 



introductory remarks 
Hon. John Bigelow 



ADDRESS 

Nicholas Murray Butler 



ADDRESS 

Marvin R. Vincent 



the warrior-priest 
Richard Watson Gilder 



ADDRESS 

Joseph H. Choate 



ADDRESS BY 
PRESIDENT JOHN BIGELOW 



As this was an extraordinary meeting of 
our association, and for an extraordinary occa- 
sion, it seemed to be proper, and I suggested 
to the committee on arrangements, that there 
should be an extraordinary chairman to con- 
duct it. The suggestion did not meet with 
the favor that I expected or that I thought it 
deserved. I was compelled to yield to the 
wishes of my associates and take the chair, 
presumably because I chance to be the suc- 
cessor of our lamented associate and friend. 

I yielded, however, with somewhat less 
reluctance from the fact that I suppose I knew 
the associate, whom we have met to honor 
tonight, long before he was known by any 
member of this association. 

In 1 83 1 I was examined by his uncle 
and predecessor in this Episcopal diocese, 
the Rev. Horatio Potter, for admission to 



Washington College, as it was then called, 
now known as Trinity College, and from him 
I learned all the algebra I ever knew. In 1834 
I was persuaded to join one of my brothers 
who had matriculated in Union College. 
There I was in the habit of seeing our lamented 
associate and his brothers during my senior 
year. They were then pursuing their studies 
in the academy at Schenectady, while their 
father was a professor and executive head 
of the college. Dr. Nott, the actual pres- 
ident, appeared rarely at the college, except 
on Sunday afternoon. One of these lads 
afterwards became president of Union Col- 
lege; another became a very leading member 
of the delegation of New York in Congress, 
and was seriously considered as a candidate 
for governor to succeed Governor Tilden. 

The father of our lamented associate, who 
was practically the executive head of the 
College, was also one of our professors, and to 
him I am under great obligations for his 
illuminating oral commentaries upon the intel- 
lectual philosophy of Abercrombie, a work 
now not much known, but then, I think very 
justly esteemed. 

I pray you to excuse me for dwelling so 
long upon these events that are of such com- 
paratively trivial importance, while we have 
among us so many members who are 



competent to speak with plenary authority of 
the professional, official, public, and social life 
and services, and the altogether brilliant career 
of the distinguished prelate whose absence we 
mourn tonight. 

However, before calling upon any of those 
gentlemen, I will ask Mr. Cary to read the reso- 
lution adopted by the Board of Management, 
which has summoned us together tonight. 

Mr. Edward Cary : The following reso- 
lution was adopted by the Board of Manage- 
ment at their November meeting, in connection 
with the proposal for the present meeting : 

Resolved, That in the death of the Right 
Reverend Henry Codman Potter the Century 
suffers a great loss. He was intimately asso- 
ciated with us for nearly two-score years. His 
election as President was but the final expres- 
sion of the regard in which he was held, and 
a recognition of the completeness with which 
he represented the spirit of the Century. 

Bishop Potter's eminence in the Church, 
his peculiar service in constructive and organ- 
ized philanthropy, his constant influence on 
the public sentiment of this community and 
of the nation, are matters of record elsewhere. 
His fellow-members of the Century desire to 
express their affectionate sense of his endear- 
ing qualities. His lofty aims, the scope and 
variety of his interests, his broad knowledge 
and experience of the world impressed his 
bearing with a certain conscious dignity. His 



simplicity and sincerity, his kindliness and 
considerateness, his manly respect for that in 
others which he respected in himself; these, 
united with his lambent humor and illuminat- 
ing wit, have made our association with him a 
precious and fertile memory. We part with 
him in deep sorrow ; the heritage his friendly 
companionship has created for us can never be 
exhausted. 



ADDRESS OF 
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 



Mr. President and Centurions: It is a 
fortunate custom, in this company of comrades 
and companions, to pause each year for an 
hour while we hear told, with loving insight 
and skill, the story of those who, during the year 
that has gone, have passed to where, beyond 
these voices, there is peace. 

Tonight we pause for an hour to pay the 
tribute of affectionate respect and regard to a 
Centurion, a Churchman and a citizen who 
stands out from among his fellows, by reason 
of the character, the eminence, the length and 
the distinction of his service to his kind. 

Plutarch has somewhere written that it is 
difficult to learn how to live in a democracy. 
Could he have foreseen the difficulties of the 
democracy of a later day, he would not have 
hesitated to strengthen that striking state- 
ment. 

5 



In the few moments at my service I wish 
to point out as briefly as I may and as clearly 
as I can that Bishop Potter had learned how 
to live in a democracy, and that he had come 
to serve for us, who were his companions, and 
for those who are to follow us and him, as a 
shining example of citizenship and of service. 
Bishop Potter had that high and lofty concep- 
tion of his station in Church and State which 
would have led him to respond with prompt 
emphasis to the insolent question of a modern 
Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" with the 
answer, "Yes, for the sake of brotherhood." 

He had learned and taught and lived the 
fact that the surely bad citizen is the selfish 
citizen and that the surely good citizen is the 
citizen in service. One likes to think of the 
many-sided interest, of the generous enthusi- 
asm and of the fine courage that marked his 
public career. 

He knew and he measured the full value 
of popularity, and I think he knew its limita- 
tions and its dangers. He knew that the time 
comes to every leader of opinion when the 
principles in which he believes and the con- 
victions which he holds compel him to stand 
with the few, perhaps even by himself. 

The demand which character makes of 
intelligence is, that the man who believes shall, 
when the time comes, dare to stand alone, if 



alone it must be. I have in mind an incident 
in the history of our city when an angry and 
almost anguished public opinion was seeking 
to find some form and mode of expression to 
improve our government and to lead our city's 
life out onto a higher and nobler plane. 
There were differences of opinion as to what 
procedure should be followed. Should the 
stand be made for principle or should sacrifice 
of principle be made, the more surely to lay 
hold of instant success, perhaps at the ever- 
lasting cost of the principle itself ? 

How Bishop Potter met that crisis I would 
like to read. I hold in my hand a brief para- 
graph which I have taken from a letter that he 
addressed, in 1895, to Mr. Fulton Cutting. He 
said this : 

"A base alliance is not justifiable, in my 
judgment, for the accomplishment of a good 
end. It is not expedient, it is not sound politi- 
cal wisdom, to compromise principle, even for 
the sake of electing good men or keeping bad 
men out of office. I can quite appreciate the 
temptation to surrender a position of indepen- 
dence which for the moment seems likely only 
to invite defeat, for the equivocal alliance which 
promises victory; and I can no less appreciate 
the reluctance to appear obstinate or imprac- 
tical, which has doubtless led many good men 
into a partnership which promises a victory 



over a common foe. But it seems to me that 
such a victory will cost the very position which 
it proposes to defend. I believe that a victory 
won by an alliance with corrupt men surrenders 
the very vantage ground from which we can 
successfully hope to fight them. I believe that 
the great mass of our citizens who have no 
personal ends to serve in an election are ready 
to stand by any group of men, however small, 
who will not consent to a base alliance even to 
attain a good end. Whatever the present may 
have in store for them, the future is theirs. 
Meantime, I am with them heart and soul." 

Those were brave words bravely spoken, 
and the time will come when we shall remember 
them and him and the fact that he spoke them. 
For there can be no doubt that the future is 
theirs, wherever the path of immediate victory 
may seem to lead ; and I count it no small 
service to this city of millions of people, with 
conflicting interests, with diverse aims, with 
partial knowledge, recruited from every corner 
of the globe, that a voice from so eminent a 
station as his could be lifted to sound a note of 
genuine moral leadership in public life. It is 
not always easy to do that. One must be 
prepared to face the sarcasm and the ridicule 
of the press, the gibes and the sneers of those 
who are before all things practical men, and 
the misunderstanding of those who would like 



to know how to help, but who are blind to an 
issue of principle. We need in this city and 
in this dear country of ours voices in high 
place which will sound that note of moral 
leadership and which will dare to say that an 
issue, even at the polls, between opposing 
candidates and as to a public office, is at bottom 
ethical and must be faced by each man's con- 
science, apart from each man's interest. 

Then I like to remember the service Bishop 
Potter did — and it was a bold service — when 
he stood, on a historic occasion, in the pulpit 
of old iSt. Paul's Church, and in the presence 
of a President of the United States, said what 
was in his heart about corruption in our public 
life and the corroding influence of the spoils 
system in politics. The whole nation, East 
and West, North and South, rose to its feet in 
splendid appreciation, not only of his cour- 
age, but of the sure instinct which led him to 
seize that dramatic moment to say to every 
American what under other circumstances 
perhaps but few Americans would have heard. 

I remember, too, that, standing in his place 
in Sanders' Theatre, perhaps twenty years ago, 
he pronounced the oration before the Harvard 
Chapter of the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, 
and that, with the insight of a shrewd psychol- 
ogist and student of human nature he put his 
hand on the weakness of the scholar in his 



IO 



relation to the life of citizenship. Bishop 
Potter did not taunt the scholar, he did not 
sneer at him, he did not call him names, he did 
not decry him, he did not ask for what end his 
scholarship. He simply said that the scholar 
must be prepared to combat the natural ten- 
dency of his scholarship to aloofness, the crit- 
icism which becomes indifference and which 
withdraws a large number of the flower of the 
nation from the"; life which belongs to them 
and to which they belong. 

There are some fine passages in that ora- 
tion. They are instinct with sound feeling, 
with knowledge of generous youth, with ap- 
preciation of the meaning of ambition and 
with full emphasis upon that one insistent 
note, the necessity for perpetual civic service 
that one's self may be perfected and ripened 
and matured. 

It is of this side of Bishop Potter's life 
and activity that I am thinking tonight, and 
it is to this side of his character that I am 
asking your attention. 

One sometimes wonders, when he reads the 
speculations of modern science, what happens 
to the energy of the little ripple in the pond, 
which is set in motion by the casting of a peb- 
ble from a child's hand. From imperceptible 
to infinitesimal the ripple moves away toward 
the sandy shore. Its impact, our reason tells 



II 



us, goes on from sand to pebble, from pebble 
to stone, from stone to boulder, from boulder 
to mountain, from mountain to continent. 
Human eye cannot see or human hand meas- 
ure the infinite smallness of it all ; yet we 
know that there it is and that that child's 
hand has set in motion some change in this 
physical universe which, so far as we know, 
will go on forever. 

Must it not be that a real personality, cast 
into the shoreless ocean of human life, which 
has done one great service, which has con- 
ceived one fine idea, which has uttered one 
splendid message of exhortation ; must it not 
be that the energy of that personality, like 
the little wavelet in the pond, is going on 
through human hearts and minds and souls, un- 
measured and unseen, and that long after this 
day and generation have passed away, in some 
manner, infinitely small, at a distance incon- 
ceivably vast, it will continue to affect and to 
move some aspect of human life ? 

It is because we think of something like 
this that we like to follow with grateful regard 
great personalities as they go from us and 
leave a little rippling wave passing from our 
sight on its way toward its unceasing service. 



ADDRESS OF 
REV. DR. MARVIN R. VINCENT 



Mr. President and Fellow Centurions: 
I shall offer no apology for having put the 
little that I have to say upon paper. My per- 
sonal interest in the theme of the evening is 
such that I should hesitate to trust myself to 
the freedom of extemporaneous discourse, lest 
I should trespass upon both your time and 
your patience. 

I count it a privilege to pay my brief tribute 
to the memory of Bishop Potter, not only 
because, as a member of the Century, I recall 
his long, prominent and happy identification 
with it, but also on the ground of a personal 
friendship extending over nearly fifty years. 

My acquaintance with him began in 1859, 
in the City of Troy, where, for seven years, he 
was the Rector of St. John's Parish. In smaller 
communities the contact is more frequent and 
more intimate than in great cities, and we came, 

J 3 



n 



14 

both socially and in public life, into familiar 
relations. Although representing different 
religious bodies, that circumstance never 
emerged in our intercourse. A loyal son of 
his Church, his religion and his churchmanship 
alike recognized and included all true Christian 
hearts, and all forms of the common faith. He 
was known as an active and useful citizen, no 
less than as an earnest and faithful clergyman, 
and was in touch with all important matters of 
local interest. Throughout that community 
he was recognized as a Christian gentleman, 
combining the graceful dignity of his profes- 
sional position with the unaffected geniality of 
a companion and neighbor. 

In this earlier and smaller environment 
were exhibited or foreshadowed the traits 
which marked his later and longer career. As 
Bishop of a great metropolitan diocese, it was 
impossible for him to confine his attention to 
graver matters. The position thrust upon 
him a bewildering number and variety of 
minor details, and the discharge of numerous 
minor functions. He frankly accepted the 
necessity, and surrendered the ideal of a sym- 
metrical and unified scheme of life, without 
surrendering the ideal of a many-sided and 
fruitful life. Not infrequently a man whose 
time and energy are thus cut up into frag- 
ments is belittled by the process, contracted 



i5 

to the dimensions of the petty details with 
which he deals, and degenerates into a machine 
with its cogs adjusted to each day's monotonous 
revolution. But somehow, in his acceptance of 
fragmentariness, and largely by means of it, he 
contrived to evolve a distinct, broad and 
strongly characteristic life. He was never 
above the details of his work, but he habitu- 
ally made the impression of being larger than 
his round of work. 

There was one thing which sharply dis- 
tinguished him, and which entered as fibre 
into his influence both as a man and as a 
clergyman ; namely, that he was, in the very best 
sense, a man of the world. The time is past 
when such a statement could produce a shock, 
or seem to conflict with his position and duty 
in the religious sphere. The time is past 
when religion was held to find its highest ex- 
pression in cloistered isolation from the world. 
Bishop Potter had a definite sense and recog- 
nition of the stress and the claim of the unseen, 
spiritual world ; but he believed, I take it, that, 
in this present time, the principal function of 
Heaven is to quicken and lift and irradiate 
this life in which we toil and fight and suffer. 
Hence he threw himself into the living world 
of men, and made himself a living part of it, 
participating in its joys, and, wherever he 
could, lending his shoulders to lift it out of its 



i6 

sordidness and sorrow ; and because of this he 
was the larger and the better man, the better 
Christian, and the nearer to the true ideal of 
the minister of the Gospel. He did not preach 
to men about a world which he had merely 
imagined in the retirement of his library, but 
about a world which he knew by personal con- 
tact with its hard and rough and evil side. 
His thought and his sympathy ranged far 
outside of the immediate circle of his clerical 
and official duties. He was open-eyed to cur- 
rent public issues ; he had opinions and not 
mere impressions respecting great social and 
political questions, and vigorously applied his 
energy to their adjustment. 

Without pretending to minute and accurate 
scholarship, the whole structure and trend of 
his mind was scholarly, his instincts and affini- 
ties were always and definitely in the direction 
of liberal culture, and both the substance and 
the style of his public utterances bore this 
stamp. 

He was preeminently tactful. He was often 
confronted with conditions where it would have 
been easy for a dogmatic and opinionated man, 
or a man with exaggerated ideals of Episcopal 
prerogative, to develop sharp and embarrassing 
issues : but he preferred to adjust a difficulty 
rather than to raise or to force one. He had 
the wisdom to discern points which he could 



i7 

conscientiously throw into the background, or 
ignore altogether, and which would be certain 
to adjust themselves if let alone: to distinguish 
between questions that were really and radically 
vital, and those which were transient, and 
exaggerated by momentary irritations and 
prejudices. 

Yet he was no compromiser or trimmer, as 
he was more than once charged with being. 
He is not the wisest, or the safest, or the most 
consistent man who never changes his attitude, 
and who refuses, on occasion, to confess him- 
self mistaken. He met an issue with courage 
and determination. His face, which we all 
knew so well, was a truthful index of a firm 
will and of capacity for cleanly-cut decision. 
His position on certain social questions some- 
times exposed him to censure and to ridicule ; 
but neither censure nor ridicule could divert 
him from the course which his conscience and 
his judgment had laid down. He was frankly 
open to the demonstration of error in his own 
plans and projects, but he would hold stead- 
fastly by them until he was convinced that he 
was mistaken, or until they were proved to be 
impracticable. Any one who should presume 
upon his kindly courtesy and suavity with the 
expectation of finding him pliable or plastic to 
the appeal of a falsehood or a sham, was sure 
to have his eyes very promptly opened. There 



i8 

was in him a dash of imperious quality which 
rarely asserted itself, but which would flash 
out now and then when he was dealing with a 
refractory personage, or with a needlessly 
complicated issue. He was quite capable of 
drastic speech on occasion. During our resi- 
dence in Troy I was one morning scurrilously 
attacked in one of the daily newspapers. I 
promptly received a note from him, in which 
he said : " I don't know whether you are going 
to take any notice of the extraordinary demon- 
stration in this morning's 'Whig.' There may 
not be as much sulphur in your blood as there 
is in mine, but if there be, and you conclude 
to reply to the cub who calls himself 'Maestro,' 
I hope you will handle him without gloves. A 
man who assaults people in that slap dash style 
needs to have his hide taken off, and the brine 
well rubbed in." 

His versatility and adaptability were remark- 
able. No situation seemed to surprise or 
embarass him. Most of us have seen and heard 
him on many and various public occasions, 
some of which called for exceptional tact and 
readiness. I do not think that we ever knew 
him to fail in saying just the right thing, and 
in the most felicitous way. He met the occa- 
sion, whatever it was, and touched the core of 
it, and did not evade it, as is so often done by 



!9 

a man who does not know what he is talk- 
ing about, with a showy display of mere 
words. 

Although he never obtruded or emphasized 
the clergyman or the Bishop, he held his sacred 
office in reverent esteem, and graced it with 
becoming dignity. Those who knew him only 
in superficial social interchanges were always 
impressed with his unaffected kindliness, his 
genial humor, his ready wit and his deftness in 
repartee. The gentleman in him was not the 
mere veneering of polished manners. It was 
the outflowering of a generous nature, and 
those who knew him better often came upon the 
" integri fontes" of his deeper personality, by 
whose living waters they were quickened and 
refreshed. Among a number of letters from 
him I have carefully preserved one which has 
a peculiar sacredness to me, and from which I 
venture to quote a few lines, because they give 
a glimpse into the heart of the man. On his 
election as Bishop in 1883 I wrote him a letter 
of congratulation, to which, of course, I did 
not expect a reply. But, a few days after, I 
received a note, written at the Secretary's 
table of the House of Bishops, and apparently 
in some brief interval of official business. He 
said : " I do not think you can guess how much 
your brotherly words have cheered and helped 
me. Give me a place in your prayers, and 



20 



may God draw us all closer together in the 
bond of a common love and a common ser- 
vice. 

We honored the Bishop, but we loved the 
man. Forceful and efficient as he was in the 
discharge of his official duties, strongly as he 
impressed himself upon his position, his deep- 
est and most abiding impress is that of his 
personality. It was truthfully written by one 
of his clergy : "The dignity and charm of such 
a personality as Bishop Potter's, which added 
lustre to the office he bore, and yet were ac- 
companied by broad and deep sympathies with 
the life of his generation, will ever remain to 
many who have known him as among the 
most beautiful and gracious memories with 
which a life can be blessed. And among 
those who have had him in their homes, — 
humble homes in the country, to whom his 
coming was an event of a year, who felt that 
he brought to their firesides and to their 
tables a personality stamped with the citizen- 
ship of the great, wide world of which they 
saw so little, — indeed among all who have 
really known his gracious charm and felt his 
simple kindness and true humanity, there will 
be abiding pain, and long-enduring sense of 
loss." 

He was spared to a ripe age. The years 
had more than begun to show their traces. 



21 



We who miss him most are glad that his well- 
earned rest and reward have come. 

" For safe with right and truth he is. 

As God lives he must live alway : 
There is no end for souls like his, 

No night for children of the day." 



THE WARRIOR-PRIEST 

He was our warrior-priest beneath whose gown 
The mailed armor took full many a dent 
When, at the front, all gallantly he went, 
In civic fight, to save the beloved town ; 

Then did the proud, outrageous foe go down, 
To shame and wide disaster swiftly sent, 
Struck by his steel to flight — in wonderment 
To see that calm brow wear the battle frown. 

For he was courteous as a knight of eld, 
And he the very soul of friendliness ; 
The spirit of youth in him lost never its power ; 

So sweet his soul, his passing smile could bless ; 
But this one passion all his long life held: 
To serve his Master to the last, lingering hour. 



RICHARD WATSON GILDER 



Century Club 
December 12, 1908 



ADDRESS OF 
JOSEPH H. CHOATE, Esq. 



Mr. President : On such a dignified occa- 
sion as this I did not like to trust to extern, 
poraneous speech, and I therefore ask to read 
a brief appreciation of our departed friend. 

I certainly could not, for want of knowledge, 
have talked about him as a Bishop. I cannot 
remember having ever seen him in church, and 
certainly never heard him preach. In truth, I 
love the outside of the churches quite as well as 
the inside, and am very like James Thomson — 
not the poet of "The Seasons," although he 
spelled his name in the same way. Few of 
you, probably, remember him, but he was a 
great habitue here twenty, thirty, forty years 
ago. He subscribed liberally to the church, 
which his wife attended, duly escorted by him, 
and the pastor called him a buttress of the 
Church ; but Evarts, a great pal of his, said 
he must have been a flying buttress. Now 

25 



26 

that is the way, I am afraid, in which I present 
myself; and flying buttresses, as everybody 
knows, certainly cannot see what is going on 
inside, in the chancel or in the pulpit. 

But if you will let me speak of him as a 
man of the world, as a man among men, which 
was the phase in which I knew him best, and 
was in frequent contact with him for thirty 
years, I shall be glad to do so. In fact we 
were so much together on the same platforms, 
in the same causes, that we must have grown 
to look alike. At any rate, I was often taken 
for him in the cars, in the street, in the elevator, 
much to his amusement. One day a good lady 
sitting opposite to me in an omnibus began to 
talk to me about her spiritual condition. When 
I drew back, a little startled, she started, too, 
and exclaimed, "Why, are you not Bishop 
Potter?" Again, in an Elevated car, I sat 
next to a man who was reading an evening 
paper, which had a picture of the Bishop. 
Seeing me looking at it he said, " Do you know, 
sir, how very much alike you and the Bishop 
look ?" I replied, " I have sometimes been 
mistaken for him, but I don't see it." "Why," 
said he, "the resemblance is perfect, only the 
Bishop never looks half as clerical as you 
always do." 

I got this off on the Bishop once at a 
public meeting, and he gave me a Roland for 



27 

my Oliver, saying, " Well, that is the best 
thing I have ever heard about Choate." 

By a man of the world I do not mean a 
worldly-minded man at all, but a man that was 
in close touch and sympathy with men and 
women all about him, interested in their affairs, 
conduct and conversation ; ready to do for 
them, act with them, think for them ; and that 
without regard to their class, quality or con- 
dition ; and this Bishop Potter was, in an 
eminent degree. 

It is such men who make the best bishops, 
lawyers, diplomatists, presidents — the best 
anything, in fact, because they are so human, 
and Bishop Potter was very human. He chose 
for his motto, " Homo sum, et nihil humani a 
me alienum puto," and he always lived up to 
that motto. Whether as president of this club, 
where, of course, he mingled with the best 
men in the city, or of the Thursday Evening 
Club, where he met the best women, or in the 
deadly heat of summer at the settlement house 
in Stanton Street, surrounded by the men, 
women and children of the slums, studying 
their wants and doing all he could for them; 
visiting the sick in the hospitals or the wicked 
in prison ; in crowded assemblies speaking for 
every kind of good cause ; at the dinner table 
with men of his own craft or of any craft, he 
was always the man, full of human interest and 



28 

sympathy; and the goodness of his heart, 
quite as much as the strength of his head, 
made him the leader that he was for so many 
years in the social life of New York. 

Of course he was a prodigious worker, 
never allowing himself an idle moment. 
Another of his mottoes must have been, 
" Never be idle," and this was one other 
secret of his marvelous influence and success. 
If you could have followed him about the city 
you would have found him, I think, in some 
such labor as the Rector of St. Martin's in the 
Fields found Gladstone. He was visiting one 
of his parishoners, a street crossing sweeper, 
and asked him if anybody had been to see him. 
" Why, yes," said he, " Mr. Gladstone." " What 
Mr. Gladstone ? " " Why, the great Mr. Glad- 
stone himself." " He often speaks to me at my 
crossing, and, missing me, he asked my mate 
if I was ill and where I lived, and so came to 
see me, and read the Bible to me." 

His friends often wondered how he found 
time to accomplish all the countless things he 
did. Sermons every Sunday, addresses every 
night, parochial work, parish work, commit- 
tees and meetings of all sorts, and, with it all, 
time for invalids and sufferers and anxious 
folks of all kinds who came to him or whom 
he visited for comfort and consolation. But 
he did find the time. He must have thought 



2 9 

out his addresses and sermons in his waking 
hours in bed, and finished them on the wing, 
as he walked or rode, for he had the grand 
habit of riding every day, and he certainly 
never threw away an hour. Time he valued 
far more than money, and as Franklin said, 
" Take care of the pennies and the pounds 
will take care of themselves," so he said, 
"Take care of the minutes and the hours, days, 
weeks and years will give a good account of 
themselves." 

Before I quit the point of his interest in 
the East Side, in our people of the lowest 
condition, I should like to pay to him the same 
tribute that he paid to another old Centurion, 
Theodore Roosevelt, a co-laborer with him in 
all that sort of philanthropic work. I do not 
mean the President, but his father, who led a 
strenuous life and was in his day a great power 
for good in New York ; not so famous, but 
quite as worthy as the son. " Theodore 
Roosevelt," he says, "in the Newsboys' Lodg- 
ing House, in the Cripples' Hospital, in the 
heart of the little Italian flower girl who 
brought her offering of grateful love to his 
door the day he died, has left behind him a 
monument the like of which mere wealth could 
never rear, and the proudest achievements 
of human genius never hope to win." So 
in city and country alike Bishop Potter made 



3° 

himself beloved for his kindness and sym- 
pathy. When he lay dying at Cooperstown 
on the Fourth of July, the Selectmen requested 
men and boys alike to abstain from all noise, 
— so inseparable from the day, as John Adams, 
who must have been a great lover of noise, 
advised, — and it passed with all the stillness 
of a Sabbath Day; not a gunshot, not a cracker, 
not even a torpedo ; and so this friend of 
humanity, for the love the people bore him, 
was allowed to die in peace. 

Before I refer to the long catalogue of 
good causes to which he was always devoting 
himself, I should like to insist for a moment 
upon the immense self-denial, the constant 
sacrifice of comfort and personal convenience, 
the fatigue and exhaustion which such work 
involves. The laborers are few and the pressure 
upon them is pitiless. I have heard that the 
number of subscribers to the organized charities 
in New York is very small, not more than a 
few thousands, in our vast host of well-to-do 
citizens; not nearly so many as the owners of 
automobiles. The same names are constantly 
found on all the subscription papers. So I 
know that the list of men who actively partici- 
pate, by their personal presence, thought and 
speech, in all the movements to promote the 
social advancement of our people, is a very 
meagre one. Most men prefer to give what 



3i 

they are pleased to call their sympathy, and 
devote themselves to their business and after 
that is over, to their slippered ease at home, 
to cards, to books, to the theatre, to the opera 
or to sleep. They haven't the least idea what 
it costs, what it takes out of a man, after the 
full day's work is done, to brace up and give 
evening after evening, week in and week 
out, year in and year out, to philanthropic, 
charitable, educational, social and public work, 
as Bishop Potter, who, from his high character 
and position, was always called on, was per- 
petually doing. 

I venture to say, in his more than thirty 
years of active work, that never a week passed, 
hardly a day, in which he was not actually en- 
gaged in some such good work, and such 
pressure was brought to bear upon him that 
he found it impossible to say " No." It was 
not a part of his professional work, but was in 
addition to it all, and the proper work of a 
Bishop is enough to test the endurance of the 
strongest, as you all know. Was it some 
movement to advance or extend education in 
the thousand and one forms in which it is 
constantly coming up, or for the correction 
and cure of some social evil, or for the organ- 
ization of charities, to improve the condition 
of the poor, or to induce the rich to come for- 
ward and give the aid that was needed, for the 



32 

relief of prisoners, or of sufferers from some of 
those great catastrophes which are constantly 
occurring, or some purely social occasion, or 
for the rescue of the negro race, — no matter 
what the cause was, — so only that it involved 
the public welfare or the relief of suffering hu- 
manity, — Bishop Potter was always called upon 
and always ready. And besides this his study 
wasdaily besieged for advicebymenand women, 
who thought, that because he was a Bishop, 
he certainly could do something for them. 

If one of our clerical brethren would lend 
me his pulpit and let me preach from the text, 
" Whosoever would be chief among you, let 
him be your servant," I certainly would illus- 
trate it by the whole life of Bishop Potter. 

Sometimes his engagements were more 
than he could possibly keep. I remember 
once, in the infancy of Barnard College, when we 
were straining every nerve to start it, — after 
Columbia had banged its doors upon women, — 
and he was to be the chief speaker, but he 
didn't come, and I was put up to talk against 
time until Bishop Potter came ; and for more 
than an hour I talked about everything and 
about nothing, until at last I had to adjourn 
the meeting ; and afterwards it turned out 
that the Bishop had been caught equally un- 
awares somewhere else and kept at work the 
whole evening. 



33 

He managed to get a vast deal of interest 
and amusement out of his work as he went 
along, and kept his eyes constantly open for 
what I may call human incidents. Once we 
were speaking together at the opening of Cap- 
tain Webb's School for Sailor Boys, and when 
I sat down the Bishop, who was presiding, said 
to me, " Did you see that pretty girl who was 
enjoying our speeches so much?" and called 
my attention to a very young lady, whose 
hand was held by a much older lady who sat 
by her side and constantly played upon it as 
on a piano. It was Helen Keller, deaf and 
blind and dumb, but she was enjoying the 
meeting as much as anybody, and the Bishop 
enjoyed her more than he did the meeting. 

I wish that his example might stimulate 
some of our lazy and self-indulgent ones to 
brace up and throw off their slippers and 
smoking jackets, and help fill the great gap 
that he has left. 

His buoyant temperament was worth mil- 
lions. His love of fun was a great help to 
him in his overwhelming labors, and any joke 
at his own expense or that of his profession 
was always most welcome to him. He loved 
to tell of the old lady on whom he was making 
a parochial visit and whom he asked the ques- 
tion whether she believed in apostolic succes- 
sion, and, after long pondering, she replied, 



34 

"Well, I have nothing agin it." "Nothing 
agin it," which represents in our day quite a 
high degree of faith. 

He loved Mr. Carter's story of the young 
man who was trying for a license to enter the 
ministry, in the good old days, and the exam- 
iners put him through all the standard ques- 
tions, which he answered well, until they came 
to the final test, " Would you be willing to be 
damned for the glory of God?" to which he 
said, " Of course not," and was turned down 
and went away sorrowful. But he was de- 
termined to succeed and to try again, if he 
had failed at first. So he came the next year, 
and when they came to the crucial question, 
he was ready for them. " Would you be will- 
ing to be damned for the glory of God?" 
"Why, certainly," he said, "I should much 
prefer it." It is needless to say that he got 
his license without delay. 

Thus, besides being a distinguished Bishop 
and an eminent publicist as the preceding 
speakers have described him, he was a most pub- 
lic spirited and useful citizen, a genuine philan- 
thropist, altogether worthy to be classed with 
the great Centurions of the past whose 
company he has joined ; such men as Bellows 
and Olmsted and Roosevelt and Hewitt, and 
Dodge and Jesup. And let us hope that our 
ranks will never fail to supply them with 
worthy successors. 

Adjournment 






LB JL 'OS 



HENRY CODMAN POTTER 

Memorial &ttom$z$ 




AT 



The Century Association 

DECEflBER 12, 1908 






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